Borck,
I guessed, was just trying to have some fun. Gotta love spellcheck. Irony is I turn it off and still have to go edit my mistakes... Still might we dare think Swaros come with a bit of ego installed?
Steadying 10s (or in my experience lightweight 8s as well), with whatever brace you can find is a big one. I agree. Bridges, trees, boulders. I look for those. Sit, elbows on knees.
To I think flexibility in thinking about my hold and body position matters. Terrain is never, (or mostly never), perfectly flat. Where do my feet have to go for stability? Then adjust body, arms and hands to find balance. Dont "sweat", be locked into things like those little thumb grooves on the bottom of the barrels on ELs for instance. They serve nicely as reference points, but are not required hand positions. Counterintuitive maybe but move, change position, to find stability.
The comment re lightweight 8s matter is relevant. The more the magnification the more it seems weight is a help. I'm old school and still like to keep the exit pupil around 4mm, not so much because of comfortable eye position, but because it helps with light in dim conditions, brush, marsh grass, underslung mud banks all shielded from light even mid day. Keeping to 4mm EP with a 10 means a 40/42. And just so happens the attendant weight is a help. RYO harness solves the issue with carrying. Its only 8 ounces or so. Trigger fingers regularly pull 3 pounds or more. This of course might be a knock on the lightness of SFL 1040. (haven't tried it).
Lastly and the most hard to explain (tried recently here), is a mental thing. When I locate a bird I want to see, having gone through all the above, my mind bears down, I focus, ignore the inner voice that wants to give up. I stare... Sorry Im not explaining that well.
Have never tried the brace.
Tom
I appreciate you having fun with me, as I hope you do me with you (Ouncepa
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I think you explained it well. In fact, I'd like to start a thread about this subject, otherwise, these gems are going be buired in this thread and since this is somewhat off topic to the OP.
In a setting where I'm watching birds like the open field near the sumac trees and berry bushes, which I posted a photos of elsewhere, I take a portable chair with me that I sling over my shoulder (I have to hike up near the top of the ridge, I'm guessing about 800 ft. at that point, top if 1,100 ft.). My arms and hands get shaky after a hike since I use trekking poles.
There's a power line pole in the middle of the field, which runs along the ridge, so I set up my portable chair near the pole and lean my back up agianst it (the chair has no back). I find that having my back supported helps steady my view through binoculars, but it's not always easy to find a tree or another vertical structure in the open woods to lean on. In the deep woods I can, but I don't often see birds in the deep woods, only deer and deer ticks.
I was just outside the house for a few minutes, it was cold and windy but it got sunny and milder in the late afternoon, and the turkey vultures and black vultures come to sleep in the pine trees on the hill in back of my neighgbor's house.
There's a telephone pole nearby I leaned against to steady my hands since I find I shake more when I'm looking at birds high in the trees than I do on the ground or in the bushes. This happened right after I read your post. I adjusted my grip as you suggested. I putt my thumbs back and changed my finger hold from around the barrels to the sides of the barrels. It helped steady the image! I couldn't use that grip all day since I'd get Carpal Tunnel with my thumbs back all day, but for short periods, it would work.
I was using my 8x32 EDG, which I usually hold by wrapping my fingers around the barrels and crossing my thumbs underneath by the shallow thumb indents. But at that step angle, the thumb back grip worked better.
The black vultures were farther away on the top of a vacant industrial building at the bottom of the street. 10x or 12x would have helped in that case. I've seen black vultures fairly close up when a pair perched on the top of the Knights of Columbus building up the block. Much nicer to look at than the hairless faced turkey vultures (how do they keep warm in the winter with no hair on the face or heads?).
I've never seen so many vultures even when I lived out in the country for two years as I do here in Bellefonte Boro. I counted 29 circling overhead at one time. They'd need to find a dead deer to find all of them, and there are no deer in this residental area.
The first thing I tried was a monopod, which I had great hope for, but all it did is transmit the "bad vibrations" from my hands to the monopod to the bins.
I have an "essential tremor" that runs in my family. My grandfather's hands got so shaky when he got older that he had to drink soup by slurping it from the bowl, because if he used a spoon, he'd spill it. My mom's hands also got shaky when she got older, but unlike Parkinson's where your hands shake when you're resting them, with esstential tremor, they shake when you hold something of significant weight. Her hands shook when she picked up her glass or cup to drink milk or coffee. Coffee's probably not a good idea if you have shaky hands.
Thansk for the tips!
Brock
